“Mac told me a little about your mom’s ex.”
Damian’s face darkened. “Yeah.” He drove three nails into the molding. “No offense, but why are you sticking around? I thought you were heading back to California ASAP.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
Bright blue eyes and a long, knowing look peeled away her outer layer with a single blink. “Nope. Last thing from my mind, actually.”
If he hadn’t been covered with sawdust right then, Summer would have reached down and touched his mouth, just to feel his lips move against her fingertips. “I thought maybe —” she began, but a crack of thunder drowned her words. Outside, the sky had turned black.
“Sorry?” He stood, took a step toward her and closed the distance between them. Their shoulders brushed, and electricity ricocheted between them. His breathing quickened. Her heart thrummed. For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Stillness. Hesitation.
Then Damian bent his head and caught her mouth with his. He stroked the curve of her chin, and she shivered. His tongue parted her lips, and one arm slipped around her waist. This kiss was stronger than the other night at the lake, with more emotion behind it. He pulled her close and lifted her onto her tiptoes. Her hands played over his biceps and she tasted his tongue, something sweet and bitter at the same time, like leftover coffee and chocolate and desire. For a crazy moment she wanted nothing at all between them. No space, no clothes, only white-hot skin.
Someone knocked at the front door.
Summer’s breath caught in her throat as Damian’s hand moved to the swell of her breast. Please, no, she willed the unseen visitor. Please go away, because I want this man to take me right here, on this floor, with the rain pouring outside and—
She exhaled as Damian’s embrace loosened. He pulled back slightly and after another second dropped both arms and moved away. She bit her bottom lip. She tingled in places that hadn’t tingled in a long, long time.
“You expecting someone?” His voice sounded ragged, and his gaze returned to her.
“I don’t think so.” No one even knew she was here.
The front door creaked open. “Damian?”
It was a female voice, one that Summer didn’t know. The hair on the back of her neck lifted. She straightened her shirt.
Damian’s face changed and he hurried into the foyer. A slight, attractive woman hovered on the threshold. Rain and wind blew in behind her. With effort, she pulled the heavy door shut.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just came by to see the place.” The woman turned to Summer and held out a thin, delicate hand. “I’m Damian’s mother, Hannah Knight. You must be Summer Thompson.”
The jealousy that had risen up in Summer’s chest vanished. The hood of Hannah’s raincoat fell away, and immediately Summer noticed the resemblance between mother and son. Same blue eyes. Same strong jawline. Chiseled features that were beautiful, almost haunting, on her became startlingly attractive on him.
Summer wiped her hands on the back of her shorts and returned the handshake. “Hi, Mrs. Knight. It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Not Mrs. Just Hannah. Please.” She pressed Summer’s hands between both of hers. “I ran into Sadie Rogers at the salon a little while ago, and she told me you’re letting us stay in the farmhouse.” Her eyes filled. “Thank you so much.”
“Oh, well...you’re welcome.” Summer felt embarrassed by the woman’s gratitude. She hadn’t done much, just put her signature on a couple sheets of paper. “It’s really nothing. I wanted to.”
Hannah looked around, taking in the grand foyer, the circular staircase, the entrance to the formal front room, the half-open bedroom door. Her eyes widened. “It’s beautiful. Beyond beautiful, really. I thought it would be, from the outside.”
“It’s so big.” Summer’s gaze moved to Damian, to his hands and his mouth and the way he kept smiling at her. “And it still needs a lot of work.”
“Have you ever thought about keeping it?”
Why did everyone ask her that? Summer shook her head. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t make much sense. My whole life is out in California now.”
“I see. Of course. Are you going to do any decorating before you go?” Hannah walked into the front room and ran a hand over the chair rail, the wide bay window, the gilt fireplace mantel. “Change the colors, anything like that?”
Summer followed the woman and pressed the backs of both hands to her face. Damian’s kiss had thrown her off-balance. Again. “I don’t know the first thing about any of it. My father bought the house and willed it to me.” She stood in front of the bay window and let her gaze rest on the cemetery gates in the distance. Donny. Her family. Her blood. She supposed her whole life wasn’t out in California now.
“But I don’t live in Whispering Pines anymore,” she added. “It would be silly to keep it. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with the interior design or anything like that.”
Hannah waved a hand. “Ah, read a few magazines, spend an afternoon in a home improvement store, and you’ll get plenty of ideas.” She looked around. “I’d do this room in pale gray, maybe, or eggshell. Something soft. Redo the window seat, the mantel...” She wandered to the window. “It certainly has a gorgeous view. Put a couple of chairs here, deep, comfortable ones so you can watch the sunrise—or the sunset, depending on what kind of hours you keep.”
Her voice, musical in the stillness, charmed Summer. A sudden thought struck her. Hadn’t Sadie mentioned something about Hannah working in design before she moved to Whispering Pines?
“Would you like to help me? Pick out colors, choose some light fixtures or something?” Might make the place feel a little more like home when potential buyers walk through. That’s what Sadie had told her, anyway. And Summer certainly wanted the sale to happen quickly. Did the request seem ridiculous? Hannah Knight probably had better things to do with her days than offer color-swatch suggestions to a total stranger.
But the woman’s eyes lit up, blue like her son’s, bright like her daughter’s. “I’d love to. I used to work as an assistant for an interior designer. A long time ago.” Her voice rang with an emotion Summer couldn’t identify.
“Was that in Poisonwood?”
Hannah looked surprised. “Yes. How did you know?” Before Summer could respond, she answered her own question. “Damian.”
“He mentioned it. Sadie too.”
Hannah crossed the foyer and inspected the master bedroom. She smiled as she wandered around the room. “Blues and greens,” she said, almost to herself. “I’d do this room in something cozy and relaxing. If you’d like, we could go to Walls and Windows over in Silver Valley to get some ideas. It’s a cute design place. Very good prices.”
“Okay.” Summer looked at her watch. She might not belong in Whispering Pines forever, but this would be a good way to fill the next few days. “Would tomorrow work?”
“I can meet you here at ten. Dinah has soccer practice in the morning, but Damian can pick her up and take her to lunch.”
“Sounds perfect.”
They walked back into the foyer as Damian descended from the second floor. Grinning, he placed one hand on each woman’s shoulder. “Someone’s talking design down here.”
Heat flooded Summer’s face at his touch.
“You just stick to your hammering and sawing,” Hannah said, “and we’ll take care of making the place look nice.”
He planted a kiss on Hannah’s cheek. “Fine by me, Mom.” Then he leaned close to Summer. “Definitely fine by me,” he whispered into her ear, and she shivered.
Summer wondered if he’d kiss her too. He didn’t, and then she was almost glad, because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep herself from reaching for more.
Much more.
Chapter Twenty
The following morning, Hannah and Summer sat in the small but beautifully decorated Windows and Walls. Hannah flipped through a book of paint colors. “Mustard or
sage for the small bathroom, do you think?” Behind them, the bells on the door tinkled as another customer walked in. Only ten thirty, and already a handful of shoppers filled the shop in Silver Valley.
“I‘m not sure,” Summer said. “I’m no good at this.”
“Of course you are. It’s hard when you’re not in the space you’re trying to design, that’s all. Let’s take a couple samples of each.” Within a matter of minutes, Hannah had selected four color swatches, plucked two catalogs from a rack in the corner, and purchased curtain rod finials in a design Summer would never have chosen but had to admit looked perfect in the sunlight.
Outside, they found a coffee shop down the block. “I really appreciate you helping me out,” Summer said as their steaming lattes arrived.
Hannah smiled. “It’s my pleasure. I love color and design, and making someplace cozy. Took me two years, but the farmhouse is almost the way I want it. I’ve bounced Dinah around so much, I want a place she can call home.”
“Does she take after you that way? With the design, I mean?”
“Well, she’s at the age where she thinks pink is the perfect complement for any décor, so it’s hard to tell. Maybe she’ll grow into it.”
“And Damian?” Summer wasn’t sure what she meant to ask.
“You know men. They’re much better with tools than with fabric swatches. Though sometimes he surprises me. He has an eye for detail that pops out every now and then. I suppose spending most of his life with just his mother has rubbed off.” She frowned. “Not in a bad way, I hope.”
Summer blew on her latte to cool it. She knew enough about family relationships not to prod further. She and Hannah had barely met. She had no right to wonder about Damian or his family or how they’d ended up in Whispering Pines.
Hannah sat back in her chair. “Did you know I had Damian when I was just nineteen?”
“Um, no. But wow.” Nineteen? Summer could barely remember that year in her own life, the bridge between eighteen and twenty, between the end of her life in Whispering Pines and the beginning of the rest of it. She’d barely managed to survive the first semester of college and focus on her studies. And heal from the accident, of course. That had made her grow up faster than a normal teenager. But she didn’t know anyone who’d become a parent that young.
Hannah propped her chin in one hand. “After high school, I fell in love with the guy working on the apartment house across the street. That’s where Damian gets his talent. Jimmy was the foreman of any project, the genius. He could do anything with his hands.” She blushed. “You know what I mean.”
Summer smiled. “I do.”
“We dated for almost a year before I got pregnant. We were going to get married.”
Summer almost didn’t want to ask. “He left?”
“He died. Fell off a roof and broke his back. He might have survived, but he was by himself, trying to finish up a job after the other guys had left. No one found him for hours.”
“Oh, Hannah. I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” Hannah shook her head. “I thought I might not even make it through the pregnancy, I cried so much. I was afraid I’d give birth to the saddest child in the world.” The emotion in her eyes shifted from sadness to loneliness to resignation and back again. “For a while, I didn’t even want to live.
“But you’re strong when you’re that young. You bounce back. And look what I got—a wonderful, handsome, talented son. He changed my life the instant I saw him. I never knew I could love someone so much. So unconditionally.” Her face brightened. “He looks so much like Jimmy, sometimes I forget when Damian walks in the room that he isn’t his father.”
Summer tried to imagine a young Hannah and the man she’d fallen in love with. Did he have Damian’s quiet confidence? His mannerism of brushing the hair from his face, his smile that crinkled at the corners? Had he waved at Hannah from rooftops and glowed with the perspiration of a job well done? She guessed so, and she wondered at the difficulty of living with an image of a love lost so many years ago.
Dad did that, she thought suddenly. After Mom died in childbirth. He lived with me, looked at me, every day for eighteen years. For the first time she wondered if Donny’s death wasn’t the only reason he’d sent her away. If after his only son died too, he simply couldn’t look at anyone who reminded him of everything he’d lost.
“After Damian was born, I stayed with my mom for a while. That was when I worked for Flora’s Designs,” Hannah went on. “I loved to create a picture in my mind and watch it come to life in a room. I had a wonderful boss who gave me all kinds of freedom with her clients.” She traced the pattern of the glass-topped table. “I worked there until Damian was about ten, and then I met T.J.”
“Your ex?”
Hannah nodded. “Also a construction worker.” She chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I guess I have a weakness for them. Our house needed repairs, so Mom and I looked in the yellow pages. Called the least expensive company we could find, and T.J. showed up.”
“What was he like?”
“Oh, your typical good-looking guy who knows it all. Muscles everywhere, cocky, a smile that could melt butter...” She paused. “I look back now and wonder what I saw in him. We dated—oh, I don’t know. Maybe six months. He proposed with a big fancy diamond, and I said yes. I wanted to get out of my mother’s house and have a real father for Damian. I figured it was time I had a life of my own.” She looked straight at Summer. “People say yes for all kinds of reasons.
“I couldn’t get pregnant, though, and that was the beginning. T.J. wanted a child right away, and when that didn’t work out, I started to see the real man I’d married. The one who drank and turned ugly when things didn’t go his way.” She crossed her arms.
“Even when I got pregnant, though, and even after Dinah was born, things didn’t change much. He always found something to get mad about. When Dinah was six, I finally got smart. I didn’t want my daughter growing up in a house like that.” She smoothed her hands over her lap. “So we moved away to start over.”
“But now you’re worried about him finding you?”
“He has a temper. T.J. isn’t used to people telling him no, so when I asked for a divorce, he told me I’d be sorry. That he’d take Dinah from me if it was the last thing he did.”
A car backfired somewhere close by, and Summer jumped. Now she was doubly glad she’d arranged the rental contingency with Sadie. At least the Knights could feel safe no matter what happened with the sale of the house.
“Enough about my problems.” Hannah sipped her latte. The color came back into her face. “How did it go with those people who came to look at the house yesterday?”
“It needed too much work. They wanted something move-in ready.”
Hannah shrugged. “Then they weren’t the right people.”
“I guess.” But I can’t stay here and wait for the right people forever. I can’t pick out curtains and play house like nothing else matters. Summer had asked her assistants back in San Francisco to shoulder so much of the responsibility. She’d put that part of her life on hold, thinking she needed all the answers here in Whispering Pines before she left again. But maybe she didn’t. Maybe answers to long-gone nights, to relationships that had barely existed in the first place, were overrated.
Or maybe she was just afraid to face them head-on.
THE RED PICKUP TRUCK gunned through the light, and Theo grabbed the door handle to keep from flying across the seat. “Keep it on the road, would ya?”
The guy behind the wheel grinned. “We only got thirty minutes for lunch, and I still gotta get a new drill bit if I’m gonna finish that job today.” He careened onto Main Street and slowed down, looking for a parking spot.
Theo cut a glance out the window. They’d ended up doing his boss’s errands in Silver Valley, one of the towns he meant to scout out for signs of Damian. Looked like a pretty la-de-da place, with fancy stores and fancy sidewalk benches and resta
urants that had tables outside, complete with umbrellas and tanned teenagers running plates of food back and forth.
The driver stomped on the brakes as a yellow sports car backed out of a parking spot in front of Paul’s Hardware. He maneuvered the truck forward and back, but Theo could have told him from the start that it wasn’t going in.
“Too small.” He slammed the truck into reverse and craned his neck, waiting for a break in the traffic. “Can I go?”
Theo didn’t answer.
“Hey! We ain’t gonna make it back ’less we find a place to park.” He swore under his breath. “Maybe I’ll just double-park and run in.”
Theo barely heard the guy. He was staring at the coffee shop next to the hardware store. One outside table was empty. A young guy with a goatee sat at another, pecking on a laptop. And two women sat at the third, drinking coffee and talking like they were best friends. He rolled down the window to get a better look.
“Well, there you are,” he whispered.
He’d found her. Without even trying, he’d found his ex-wife enjoying a cup of coffee right smack in the middle of downtown Silver Valley. He didn’t know who was with her, but it didn’t matter. If she didn’t live in town, she lived close by. He shouldn’t have too much trouble tracking down where Hannah and Dinah lived and, as long as Damian wasn’t around, convincing them to come back to Baltimore would be easy as pie.
Theo wet his lips and smiled. He could hardly wait.
Chapter Twenty-one
Summer examined the tile samples and closed one eye. Yesterday’s shopping trip had turned out better than she’d expected. They’d hit three more stores after lunch, returning to Whispering Pines late in the afternoon loaded down with bags and boxes. So much for paying off my credit card bill. It had been worth it, though. Today, rose-colored curtains waited to be hung in the front room, and she stood in the master bath before six different tiles, trying to decide which would look right. Mac had called in three extra guys to help this week, so the exterior of the house was shaping up as well. Sadie had two buyers coming to look at it tomorrow afternoon, and Summer wanted as much as possible done before then.
Second Chance Summer Page 11